1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for non-invasively measuring glucose concentration in a living body without blood sampling.
2. Background Art
Hilson et al. report facial and sublingual temperature changes in diabetics following intravenous glucose injection (non-patent literature 1). Scott et al. discuss the issue of diabetes mellitus and thermoregulation (non-patent literature 2). Based on such research, Cho et al. suggest a method and apparatus for determining blood glucose concentration by temperature measurement without requiring the collection of a blood sample (patent literature 1 and 2).
Various other attempts have been made to determine glucose concentration without blood sampling. For example, a method has been suggested (patent literature 3) whereby a measurement site is irradiated with near-infrared light of three wavelengths, and the intensity of transmitted light as well as the temperature of the living body is detected. Then, representative values of the second-order differentiated values of absorbance are calculated, and the representative values are corrected in accordance with the difference of the living body temperature from a predetermined reference temperature. The blood sugar level corresponding to the thus corrected representative values is then determined. An apparatus is also provided (patent literature 4) whereby a measurement site is heated or cooled while monitoring the living body temperature. The degree of attenuation of light based on light irradiation is measured at the moment of temperature change so that the glucose concentration responsible for the temperature-dependency of the degree of light attenuation can be measured. Further, an apparatus is reported (patent literature 5) whereby an output ratio between reference light and the light transmitted by an irradiated sample is taken, and then the glucose concentration is calculated by a linear expression of the logarithm of the output ratio and the living body temperature.
(Non-patent literature 1)
R. M. Hilson and T. D. R. Hockaday, “Facial and sublingual temperature changes following intravenous glucose injection in diabetics,” Diabete & Metabolisme, 8, pp. 15–19: 1982
(Non-patent literature 2)
A. R. Scott, T. Bennett, I. A. MacDonald, “Diabetes mellitus and thermoregulation,” Can. J. Physiol. Pharmacol., 65, pp. 1365–1376: 1987
(Patent Literature 1)
U.S. Pat. No. 5,924,996
(Patent Literature 2)
U.S. Pat. No. 5,795,305
(Patent Literature 3)
JP Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2000-258343 A
(Patent Literature 4)
JP Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 10-33512 A (1998)
(Patent Literature 5)
JP Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 10-108857 A (1998)
Glucose (blood sugar) in the blood is used for glucose oxidation reaction in cells to produce necessary energy for the maintenance of living bodies. In the basal metabolism state, in particular, most of the produced energy is converted into heat energy for the maintenance of body temperature. Thus, it can be expected that there is some relationship between blood glucose concentration and body temperature. However, as is evident from the way sicknesses cause fever, the body temperature also varies due to factors other than blood glucose concentration.
While methods have been proposed to determine blood glucose concentration by temperature measurement without blood sampling, they lack sufficient accuracy.